So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

On 17/10/19 7:55 am, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.

I've long wondered about reversing a 4WD Subaru engine and drive-train
to make a mid-engined 4WD. The centre of gravity is very low, and there
is a plethora of boost options.

Very important the engine needs to look great.

Not very easy to show off a mid engine, but ok.

CH

wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

Any particular brand or lack of electronics to deal with?

Not many that are really good looking.
The old iron duke 2.5 had some really hot parts available that could get
you 250-300 hp out of them as Pontiac super duty engines.
https://gafiero.akroncdnr.com/docs/IronDukeBuild.pdf

If you want something more modern you can have reliable and power but
I'd be hard pressed to call any of them good looking. Power parts wise
you would probably need to look at Honda or Toyota for lower cost parts.

As far as making the body, why not look at some of the body kits out
there for the kit cars. Or go take a few courses from someone like
www.lazzemetalshaping.com

--
Steve W.

On Thu, 17 Oct 2019 03:46:37 -0400, "Steve W."
wrote:

wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

Any particular brand or lack of electronics to deal with?

Not many that are really good looking.
The old iron duke 2.5 had some really hot parts available that could get
you 250-300 hp out of them as Pontiac super duty engines.
https://gafiero.akroncdnr.com/docs/IronDukeBuild.pdf

If you want something more modern you can have reliable and power but
I'd be hard pressed to call any of them good looking. Power parts wise
you would probably need to look at Honda or Toyota for lower cost parts.

As far as making the body, why not look at some of the body kits out
there for the kit cars. Or go take a few courses from someone like
www.lazzemetalshaping.com
I could buy a body but I want to make my own. I may indeed take
some classes and appreciate your link.
Several years ago I visited a guy in Washington State who was
building a land speed record attempting car. I don't know if he ever
took it out to the salt flats but I do know that the car was quite
impressive.
He not only built the engines but also the complete car. It was
long and narrow, a typical shape for speed records. The wheels were so
close to each other that they almost appeared to be single wheels,
also typical.
He had done all the body panels himself and had all the sheet metal
tools to do the work. He demonstrated a shrinker, which I thought was
a really cool device. He showed us how shrinking an edge started the
shape of a fender. He showed us other stuff too so the visit to his
garage was great fun and really inspiring.
Eric

On Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:55:09 -0700, etpm wrote:


Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Drive train out of an MR-2?

Jon

On Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:55:09 -0700
wrote:

So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

Maybe the Suzuki Hayabusa engine. See if it suits your needs:

https://www.ebay.com/b/Complete-Engi...108/bn_1488610

Guy's are modifying, using them in their motorcycles on the drag strip
with some impressive times. See the wiki article for other uses:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Hayabusa

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI

The GM Ecotec 4 cylinders look good and the turbocharged versions (LHU) can produce 300 HP (or more) with an ECU tune and will run using a stock GM stand-alone ECU. The DF Goblin kit car uses it in mid-engine configuration.

Also look at midlana.com for building a complete sports car from scratch. He has 2 books on his builds that are very good.

Randy

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available..

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

--
Ed Huntress

On 19/10/2019 15:42, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

I'd have to disagree about the turbo, my old Lancia Delta HF turbo ie
had a slight delay which might be a drawback at a traffic light GP but
in real world use such as overtaking the slight delay was more than
offset by the performance increase when the boost came on. I would have
suggested the FIAT/Lancia engine as a very good looking engine, to me
anyway, and lots of tuning potential but they're not nearly as common as
they used to be.

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 11:17:43 AM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 15:42, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks.. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

I'd have to disagree about the turbo, my old Lancia Delta HF turbo ie
had a slight delay which might be a drawback at a traffic light GP but
in real world use such as overtaking the slight delay was more than
offset by the performance increase when the boost came on. I would have
suggested the FIAT/Lancia engine as a very good looking engine, to me
anyway, and lots of tuning potential but they're not nearly as common as
they used to be.

1) Try getting parts for one in North America. d8-)
2) The "slight delay" is not fun when you're powering out of a late-apex turn.

On 19/10/2019 16:42, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 11:17:43 AM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 15:42, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

I'd have to disagree about the turbo, my old Lancia Delta HF turbo ie
had a slight delay which might be a drawback at a traffic light GP but
in real world use such as overtaking the slight delay was more than
offset by the performance increase when the boost came on. I would have
suggested the FIAT/Lancia engine as a very good looking engine, to me
anyway, and lots of tuning potential but they're not nearly as common as
they used to be.
1) Try getting parts for one in North America. d8-)
2) The "slight delay" is not fun when you're powering out of a late-apex turn.

Turbo lag is not something that most sports car enthusiasts take lightly. It's fine for other types of driving.

I loved the Lancia Stratos, BTW, although it was a bit fierce for me. I got to drive one years ago but it would have taken some time to get used to it. It's too bad that FIAT won't sell Lancias outside of Italy anymore, but they racked up a pretty bad reputation over here during the short time they were sold in N.A.

While I know that Lancia pulled out to the UK years ago largely due to
the Beta rust fiasco I don't think they ever pulled out of Europe as a
whole as when I've been on the continent I've seen plenty of much newer
Lancias driving about. Lancia were still selling the Deltas in the UK
but that may have been the last model they sold here apart from the odd
Gamma and Thema. I read recently that the Alfasud was made with Russian
steel so maybe the same stuff that Lancia used, Alfa Romeo still sell
here but I guess better made than in the old days.

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 1:22:47 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 16:42, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 11:17:43 AM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 15:42, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel..
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

I'd have to disagree about the turbo, my old Lancia Delta HF turbo ie
had a slight delay which might be a drawback at a traffic light GP but
in real world use such as overtaking the slight delay was more than
offset by the performance increase when the boost came on. I would have
suggested the FIAT/Lancia engine as a very good looking engine, to me
anyway, and lots of tuning potential but they're not nearly as common as
they used to be.
1) Try getting parts for one in North America. d8-)
2) The "slight delay" is not fun when you're powering out of a late-apex turn.

Turbo lag is not something that most sports car enthusiasts take lightly. It's fine for other types of driving.

I loved the Lancia Stratos, BTW, although it was a bit fierce for me. I got to drive one years ago but it would have taken some time to get used to it. It's too bad that FIAT won't sell Lancias outside of Italy anymore, but they racked up a pretty bad reputation over here during the short time they were sold in N.A.

While I know that Lancia pulled out to the UK years ago largely due to
the Beta rust fiasco I don't think they ever pulled out of Europe as a
whole as when I've been on the continent I've seen plenty of much newer
Lancias driving about. Lancia were still selling the Deltas in the UK
but that may have been the last model they sold here apart from the odd
Gamma and Thema. I read recently that the Alfasud was made with Russian
steel so maybe the same stuff that Lancia used, Alfa Romeo still sell
here but I guess better made than in the old days.

Here's the story on Lancia as of today:

https://europe.autonews.com/automake...-storied-brand

One car model, one country. FIAT has its fingers in so many old brands that it's hard to tell who makes what now. They've rebranded a couple of American Chrysler models as Lancias in recent years.

They've made another push with Alfa Romeo in the US over the past year. When I was in the advertising business they were my client for a short while, just before they pulled out again. They come, they go.

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric

On 19/10/2019 20:12, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric

Have a look at the modern Morgan 3 wheeler, that apparently uses a US
sourced V twin engine similar to the Harley Davidson mated to a Mazda
gearbox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_3-Wheeler . There is some
film of them being built and the engine being fitted to the frame it may
be available online.

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric

Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

--
Ed Huntress

On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.

On 10/19/2019 2:12 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric

Â*Have you considered a Volkswagen motor ? Some years the ring gear can
be flipped and the unit mounted as a mid-engine .

--
Snag
Yes , I'm old
and crochety - and armed .
Get outta my woods !

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel..
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.

No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneeredÂ*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market
Not entirely true. Taxes went up EXTREMELY high for older vehicles,
which is what put the JDM engines on the american market. You COULD
continue driving a 20 year old car with 60000 miles on it, but IT COST
BIG TIME!!!!

. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
The engine from a Pontiac Solstice might be a good fit - - - (or
Saturn Sky?) A friend is putting an ecotec in a Morris Minor - - -
that has proven to be challenging being it was a FWD engine - wishes
now he had waited for the Solstice to hit the market before he started
the project - - -

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 08:42:50 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 11:17:43 AM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 15:42, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!

I'd have to disagree about the turbo, my old Lancia Delta HF turbo ie
had a slight delay which might be a drawback at a traffic light GP but
in real world use such as overtaking the slight delay was more than
offset by the performance increase when the boost came on. I would have
suggested the FIAT/Lancia engine as a very good looking engine, to me
anyway, and lots of tuning potential but they're not nearly as common as
they used to be.

1) Try getting parts for one in North America. d8-)
2) The "slight delay" is not fun when you're powering out of a late-apex turn.

Turbo lag is not something that most sports car enthusiasts take lightly. It's fine for other types of driving.

I loved the Lancia Stratos, BTW, although it was a bit fierce for me. I got to drive one years ago but it would have taken some time to get used to it. It's too bad that FIAT won't sell Lancias outside of Italy anymore,
Saw lots of them in Greece last week - - -

but they racked up a pretty bad reputation over here during the short time they were sold in N.A.

On 19/10/2019 22:40, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.
No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneeredÂ*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress



Sounds like 2 countries separated by a common language, on this side of
the pond the Pinto engine always referred to the OHC engine as fitted to
some Ford Cortina Sierra etcÂ* and the Kent was the OHV engine, I didn't
know the Kent OHV was fitted to the Pinto but basically your mate has
the Kent OHV engine in his Lotus 7 by the sound of it. I know an engine
machinist that specialises in the Lotus twin cam, BDA, and some Ford
Kent Xflow head work and he didn't seem too traumatised when I met up
with him again recently but he did mention that the twin cam blocks
differed from the standard blocks as they were beefier and marked with a
big L on the block casting and maybe other changes for reliability. An
ex racing driver I used to know told me about head work on the old Aston
Martin straight 6 engines and why so few people wanted to work on them
as apparently they have no shims and the valves stems have to be ground
or the seats cut to get the gaps right, makes the FIAT system with the
shims on top of the bucket tappets a dream, IIRC VAG adopted it under
license and a mate mentioned that even Ford don't use hydraulic tappets
on some engines these days as when shimmed in manufacture they last
which was my experience on the FIAT engines when maintained.

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 13:24:30 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric

"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric

Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!
A Toyota 3tg would be nice - or a twin-cam ford Escort or Zetec from
a ZX2. The 3TG is hard to find over here but was a HOT engine in the
Celoca RT series rallye cars - - -1600cc of DYNAMITE

"David Billington" wrote in message
...
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4,
wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4,
wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car
from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the
bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English
wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to
be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a
bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm
looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can
be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your
other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them.
Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a
decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market.
Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They
were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE
Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but
it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the
top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with
the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do
like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo
lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you
spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines.
They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In
a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing.
There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is
one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done
some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea
of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd
look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd
look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts
are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure
you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive.
Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin,
and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts
hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of
the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR
1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was
faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215
cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the
original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any
engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc
Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp
in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in
the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's
essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent --
probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it
probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than
1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little
more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those
little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you*
or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto
engine was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine
while the Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a
Caterham7 (Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec
but neither is a great engine IMO just very common and easy to come
by or were.


The latest version of Ford's OHC 2.3 liter 4 :
https://www.motor1.com/news/344547/f...mance-package/

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 6:10:01 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 22:40, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.
No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneeredÂ*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential..

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress



Sounds like 2 countries separated by a common language, on this side of
the pond the Pinto engine always referred to the OHC engine as fitted to
some Ford Cortina Sierra etcÂ* and the Kent was the OHV engine, I didn't
know the Kent OHV was fitted to the Pinto but basically your mate has
the Kent OHV engine in his Lotus 7 by the sound of it. I know an engine
machinist that specialises in the Lotus twin cam, BDA, and some Ford
Kent Xflow head work and he didn't seem too traumatised when I met up
with him again recently but he did mention that the twin cam blocks
differed from the standard blocks as they were beefier and marked with a
big L on the block casting and maybe other changes for reliability. An
ex racing driver I used to know told me about head work on the old Aston
Martin straight 6 engines and why so few people wanted to work on them
as apparently they have no shims and the valves stems have to be ground
or the seats cut to get the gaps right, makes the FIAT system with the
shims on top of the bucket tappets a dream, IIRC VAG adopted it under
license and a mate mentioned that even Ford don't use hydraulic tappets
on some engines these days as when shimmed in manufacture they last
which was my experience on the FIAT engines when maintained.

Yes, that pushrod Kent was the basic engine in the Pintos sold in the US. My roommate thought it would be cheaper and easier to put one in his Lotus, but then discovered that the wiring was all wrong, and he wound up spending more than he would have if he had left the twin-cam in it. d8-) But he still has the car, which he bought in 1971, and he can still get parts, so maybe he wound up better overall. I doubt if more than a dozen or two Mk. 4s are left in the US.

As for grinding valve clearances, since you're British, you may remember how you adjusted valves in the old flathead Ford Anglias. You had to surface-grind the lifters. Ouch. They may have changed that just before they went to the 105E overhead-valve engine.

As for Lotus twin-cams, you have to know what you're doing. If the chain drive isn't properly loaded when you're adjusting valves, you get all screwed up. I never learned how to do it. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

One more point on the 6-cyl Aston-Martin: The owner's manual included instructions for de-coking the heads. Yike. Welcome to the 1930s.

From what I've heard, valve adjustment is a rare thing these days. That's good. I hated getting covered with hot motor oil, and my dad would raise hell when he saw all the oil on our garage floor. g

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 15:51:17 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 6:10:01 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 22:40, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.
No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneered*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress



Sounds like 2 countries separated by a common language, on this side of
the pond the Pinto engine always referred to the OHC engine as fitted to
some Ford Cortina Sierra etc* and the Kent was the OHV engine, I didn't
know the Kent OHV was fitted to the Pinto but basically your mate has
the Kent OHV engine in his Lotus 7 by the sound of it. I know an engine
machinist that specialises in the Lotus twin cam, BDA, and some Ford
Kent Xflow head work and he didn't seem too traumatised when I met up
with him again recently but he did mention that the twin cam blocks
differed from the standard blocks as they were beefier and marked with a
big L on the block casting and maybe other changes for reliability. An
ex racing driver I used to know told me about head work on the old Aston
Martin straight 6 engines and why so few people wanted to work on them
as apparently they have no shims and the valves stems have to be ground
or the seats cut to get the gaps right, makes the FIAT system with the
shims on top of the bucket tappets a dream, IIRC VAG adopted it under
license and a mate mentioned that even Ford don't use hydraulic tappets
on some engines these days as when shimmed in manufacture they last
which was my experience on the FIAT engines when maintained.

Yes, that pushrod Kent was the basic engine in the Pintos sold in the US. My roommate thought it would be cheaper and easier to put one in his Lotus, but then discovered that the wiring was all wrong, and he wound up spending more than he would have if he had left the twin-cam in it. d8-) But he still has the car, which he bought in 1971, and he can still get parts, so maybe he wound up better overall. I doubt if more than a dozen or two Mk. 4s are left in the US.

As for grinding valve clearances, since you're British, you may remember how you adjusted valves in the old flathead Ford Anglias. You had to surface-grind the lifters. Ouch. They may have changed that just before they went to the 105E overhead-valve engine.

As for Lotus twin-cams, you have to know what you're doing. If the chain drive isn't properly loaded when you're adjusting valves, you get all screwed up. I never learned how to do it. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

One more point on the 6-cyl Aston-Martin: The owner's manual included instructions for de-coking the heads. Yike. Welcome to the 1930s.

From what I've heard, valve adjustment is a rare thing these days. That's good. I hated getting covered with hot motor oil, and my dad would raise hell when he saw all the oil on our garage floor. g
The beauty of roller cams and overhead cams - few moving parts with
little wear potential - and hardened seats that don't attempt to bury
the valves in the head - - -
The advances that have come with unleaded fuel have reduced engine
maintenance and extended engine life SIGNIFICANTLY - add the
advantages of electronic engine control and efi - and then compound
that with adjustable valve timing and direct injection and the
performance potential has also skyrocketed. Compression ratios that
were unheard of only 15 years ago can now be run on regular pump gas
and turbo engines can be run with CRs that were borderline on NA
engines not that long ago.

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 15:51:17 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 6:10:01 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 22:40, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.
No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneered*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress



Sounds like 2 countries separated by a common language, on this side of
the pond the Pinto engine always referred to the OHC engine as fitted to
some Ford Cortina Sierra etc* and the Kent was the OHV engine, I didn't
know the Kent OHV was fitted to the Pinto but basically your mate has
the Kent OHV engine in his Lotus 7 by the sound of it. I know an engine
machinist that specialises in the Lotus twin cam, BDA, and some Ford
Kent Xflow head work and he didn't seem too traumatised when I met up
with him again recently but he did mention that the twin cam blocks
differed from the standard blocks as they were beefier and marked with a
big L on the block casting and maybe other changes for reliability. An
ex racing driver I used to know told me about head work on the old Aston
Martin straight 6 engines and why so few people wanted to work on them
as apparently they have no shims and the valves stems have to be ground
or the seats cut to get the gaps right, makes the FIAT system with the
shims on top of the bucket tappets a dream, IIRC VAG adopted it under
license and a mate mentioned that even Ford don't use hydraulic tappets
on some engines these days as when shimmed in manufacture they last
which was my experience on the FIAT engines when maintained.

Yes, that pushrod Kent was the basic engine in the Pintos sold in the US. My roommate thought it would be cheaper and easier to put one in his Lotus, but then discovered that the wiring was all wrong, and he wound up spending more than he would have if he had left the twin-cam in it. d8-) But he still has the car, which he bought in 1971, and he can still get parts, so maybe he wound up better overall. I doubt if more than a dozen or two Mk. 4s are left in the US.

As for grinding valve clearances, since you're British, you may remember how you adjusted valves in the old flathead Ford Anglias. You had to surface-grind the lifters. Ouch. They may have changed that just before they went to the 105E overhead-valve engine.

As for Lotus twin-cams, you have to know what you're doing. If the chain drive isn't properly loaded when you're adjusting valves, you get all screwed up. I never learned how to do it. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

One more point on the 6-cyl Aston-Martin: The owner's manual included instructions for de-coking the heads. Yike. Welcome to the 1930s.

From what I've heard, valve adjustment is a rare thing these days. That's good. I hated getting covered with hot motor oil, and my dad would raise hell when he saw all the oil on our garage floor. g
Another good engine, if he can find one, is the twin-cam Toyota "A"
series engine from the old EA86 SR5 - or a Mazda Miata 1800. On a
light car like a Lotus 7 clone you don't need to turbo it - but the
turbo lag is not very noticeable with a light racing flywheel on a
fly-weight vehicle. A friend used to race a "lightweight" Miata with a
turbo on it and he was VERY competetive.It was down well under 1400
lbs in racing form and gave a lot of high-buck sports racers a good
run for their money. Didn't need the turbo at the bottom end and
really didn't NEED it at the top end either - but it made life
interesting - - -
That was after the 3 cyl turbo "zook" (1988 Suzuki Forsa) - (same as a
Chevy Turbo Sprint or Pontiac Turbo Firefly) which was also a real
handful.

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 7:44:56 PM UTC-4, Clare wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 15:51:17 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 6:10:01 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 22:40, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.
No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneeredÂ*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress



Sounds like 2 countries separated by a common language, on this side of
the pond the Pinto engine always referred to the OHC engine as fitted to
some Ford Cortina Sierra etcÂ* and the Kent was the OHV engine, I didn't
know the Kent OHV was fitted to the Pinto but basically your mate has
the Kent OHV engine in his Lotus 7 by the sound of it. I know an engine
machinist that specialises in the Lotus twin cam, BDA, and some Ford
Kent Xflow head work and he didn't seem too traumatised when I met up
with him again recently but he did mention that the twin cam blocks
differed from the standard blocks as they were beefier and marked with a
big L on the block casting and maybe other changes for reliability. An
ex racing driver I used to know told me about head work on the old Aston
Martin straight 6 engines and why so few people wanted to work on them
as apparently they have no shims and the valves stems have to be ground
or the seats cut to get the gaps right, makes the FIAT system with the
shims on top of the bucket tappets a dream, IIRC VAG adopted it under
license and a mate mentioned that even Ford don't use hydraulic tappets
on some engines these days as when shimmed in manufacture they last
which was my experience on the FIAT engines when maintained.

Yes, that pushrod Kent was the basic engine in the Pintos sold in the US.. My roommate thought it would be cheaper and easier to put one in his Lotus, but then discovered that the wiring was all wrong, and he wound up spending more than he would have if he had left the twin-cam in it. d8-) But he still has the car, which he bought in 1971, and he can still get parts, so maybe he wound up better overall. I doubt if more than a dozen or two Mk. 4s are left in the US.

As for grinding valve clearances, since you're British, you may remember how you adjusted valves in the old flathead Ford Anglias. You had to surface-grind the lifters. Ouch. They may have changed that just before they went to the 105E overhead-valve engine.

As for Lotus twin-cams, you have to know what you're doing. If the chain drive isn't properly loaded when you're adjusting valves, you get all screwed up. I never learned how to do it. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

One more point on the 6-cyl Aston-Martin: The owner's manual included instructions for de-coking the heads. Yike. Welcome to the 1930s.

From what I've heard, valve adjustment is a rare thing these days. That's good. I hated getting covered with hot motor oil, and my dad would raise hell when he saw all the oil on our garage floor. g
The beauty of roller cams and overhead cams - few moving parts with
little wear potential - and hardened seats that don't attempt to bury
the valves in the head - - -
The advances that have come with unleaded fuel have reduced engine
maintenance and extended engine life SIGNIFICANTLY - add the
advantages of electronic engine control and efi - and then compound
that with adjustable valve timing and direct injection and the
performance potential has also skyrocketed. Compression ratios that
were unheard of only 15 years ago can now be run on regular pump gas
and turbo engines can be run with CRs that were borderline on NA
engines not that long ago.

Very true! They've reached extraordinary heights of engineering sophistication. Just in time to be replaced by electric motors. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 17:10:25 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 7:44:56 PM UTC-4, Clare wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 15:51:17 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 6:10:01 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 22:40, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 5:10:09 PM UTC-4, David Billington wrote:
On 19/10/2019 21:24, wrote:
On Saturday, October 19, 2019 at 3:12:14 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric
Well, there have been some successful ones. In the early days of the Locost, at least one was powered with a Honda Fireblade (CBR 1000RR, 998 cc) motorcycle engine, and the report was that it was faster than a Locost powered by a Rover V8 (essentially the old 215 cu. in. Oldsmobile aluminum V8).

It's all a matter of what you want in a car of this type. When the original Lotus 6 (soon to be Lotus 7) came out, you could put any engine in it that you wanted. Lotus would deliver them with 948 cc Morris engine or a Ford Anglia. Neither one put out more than 50 hp in stock trim, but they were race winners.

My college roommate has one of the 50 Lotus 7 Mk. 4s delivered in the US, and he has a 1600 cc Ford Pinto engine it it. That's essentially the same engine as the English Ford 125E New Kent -- probably the most common engine in Lotus 7s. I've driven it; it probably doesn't have more than 100 hp, but it weighs less than 1300 lb. and it goes like hell.

So decide if you want a wild thing or something that's a little more relaxing to drive. It doesn't take much power to make those little space-frame club racers really run. But it has to suit *you* or it isn't worth the trouble.

Have fun!

I think you have the wrong engine in mind there, the Ford Pinto engine
was OHC see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto_engine while the
Kent in various derivations was OHV see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Kent_engine . A mate has a Caterham7
(Lotus 7) with the Kent engine in 135hp Supersport spec but neither is a
great engine IMO just very common and easy to come by or were.
No, Dave, I have the right engine. The Pinto was available with a 1600 cc pushrod -- essentially the English Ford New Kent -- or with the 2.0 - 2.3 liter SOHC engine (that had too few oil holes in the crankshaft, and tended to burn up main bearings g). I know both engines from personal experience -- mostly bad. d8-)

The 125E New Kent was a well-developed engine that began with the 105E, which had a hollow crankshaft. I owned one car with a 115E and worked on a friend's car with the 109E. I was very familiar with the whole series. They pioneered*the short-stroke (oversquare) design for ordinary sedans, and wound up being the basis of more sports-car and racing engines than, probably, any other. Aside from the short stroke, there was nothing unusual about them, but they were pretty sound and had a lot of horsepower potential.

I also once got the lousy job of adjusting valves on a Holbay-headed, cross-flow Kent, and, to my misfortune, the twin-cam Lotus version, from which I ran as fast as I could. d8-)

When word got around our local chapter of the SCCA that I knew a way to cold-lash the valves on a Bristol engine, all sorts of things showed up in my driveway on Sunday afternoons. They thought I was a magician. Tney were wrong. I just had an English mechanic friend who knew all the tricks, and was very patient in teaching me.

Ed Huntress



Sounds like 2 countries separated by a common language, on this side of
the pond the Pinto engine always referred to the OHC engine as fitted to
some Ford Cortina Sierra etc* and the Kent was the OHV engine, I didn't
know the Kent OHV was fitted to the Pinto but basically your mate has
the Kent OHV engine in his Lotus 7 by the sound of it. I know an engine
machinist that specialises in the Lotus twin cam, BDA, and some Ford
Kent Xflow head work and he didn't seem too traumatised when I met up
with him again recently but he did mention that the twin cam blocks
differed from the standard blocks as they were beefier and marked with a
big L on the block casting and maybe other changes for reliability. An
ex racing driver I used to know told me about head work on the old Aston
Martin straight 6 engines and why so few people wanted to work on them
as apparently they have no shims and the valves stems have to be ground
or the seats cut to get the gaps right, makes the FIAT system with the
shims on top of the bucket tappets a dream, IIRC VAG adopted it under
license and a mate mentioned that even Ford don't use hydraulic tappets
on some engines these days as when shimmed in manufacture they last
which was my experience on the FIAT engines when maintained.

Yes, that pushrod Kent was the basic engine in the Pintos sold in the US. My roommate thought it would be cheaper and easier to put one in his Lotus, but then discovered that the wiring was all wrong, and he wound up spending more than he would have if he had left the twin-cam in it. d8-) But he still has the car, which he bought in 1971, and he can still get parts, so maybe he wound up better overall. I doubt if more than a dozen or two Mk. 4s are left in the US.

As for grinding valve clearances, since you're British, you may remember how you adjusted valves in the old flathead Ford Anglias. You had to surface-grind the lifters. Ouch. They may have changed that just before they went to the 105E overhead-valve engine.

As for Lotus twin-cams, you have to know what you're doing. If the chain drive isn't properly loaded when you're adjusting valves, you get all screwed up. I never learned how to do it. Fortunately, I didn't have to.

One more point on the 6-cyl Aston-Martin: The owner's manual included instructions for de-coking the heads. Yike. Welcome to the 1930s.

From what I've heard, valve adjustment is a rare thing these days. That's good. I hated getting covered with hot motor oil, and my dad would raise hell when he saw all the oil on our garage floor. g
The beauty of roller cams and overhead cams - few moving parts with
little wear potential - and hardened seats that don't attempt to bury
the valves in the head - - -
The advances that have come with unleaded fuel have reduced engine
maintenance and extended engine life SIGNIFICANTLY - add the
advantages of electronic engine control and efi - and then compound
that with adjustable valve timing and direct injection and the
performance potential has also skyrocketed. Compression ratios that
were unheard of only 15 years ago can now be run on regular pump gas
and turbo engines can be run with CRs that were borderline on NA
engines not that long ago.

Very true! They've reached extraordinary heights of engineering sophistication. Just in time to be replaced by electric motors. d8-)
ANd contrary to what you would expect, the reliability has IMPROVED
with the sophistication, not decreased. Generally the more complicated
you make something the more goes wrong. Today it is well within the
realm of "normal" for an engine to go 1/4 million miles without ANY
repairs - simply change the spark plugs every 100,000 and the oil
every 10,000 - the fuel and air filters a few times and mabee a belt
or hose or two -- -
Used to be 1HP per cu inch was the holy grail - now 2 is getting
pretty common - like 197 hp out of a 1.3 liter turbo hyabusa - that's
just under 80 cubic inches and 2.46 hp per cubic inch!!!!!

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 16:15:41 -0500, Terry Coombs
wrote:

On 10/19/2019 2:12 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 07:42:27 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Wednesday, October 16, 2019 at 4:48:55 PM UTC-4, wrote:
So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.
I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Thanks,
Eric
"Looks great" caused me to slam on the brakes. g As for your other requirements, it's hard to beat Hondas for most of them. Japanese law required that engines be changed at 40,000 miles a decade or so ago, which put a lot of used ones on the US market. Moderate speed equipment is readily available.

I rebuilt two Alfa Romeo 1300 cc engines in the late '60s. They were beautiful. One had a Veloce head with twin side-draft DCOE Webers. I don't know of anything that looks that good today, but it's hard to tell until you get all of that plastic junk off the top of them. I own a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek, and I've seen it with the plastic off of it. Not exactly a thing of beauty, but I do like the engine.

If you want real sports car performance, avoid turbos. The turbo lag is antithetical to sports-car type responsiveness, unless you spend megabucks. Garden-variety turbos are not sporty engines. They just wind up -- eventually -- and put out a lot of power. In a light sports car, you don't need that much.

What you need is great throttle response and good breathing. There are a lot of good engines out there today. Your project is one I've dreamed about off and on over the years, and having done some sports-car racing between 1967 and 1972, I have a good idea of what I'd want my engine to be good at if I ever did it. I'd look at Honda, Toyota, and Nissan. If one dropped in my lap, I'd look at a 3-Series BMW. But I'd make sure that aftermarket parts are readily available for anything I chose. Oh...and make sure you can mate it up with a transmission for rear-wheel drive. Maybe an engine that's used in a small pickup.

Good luck and have fun!
I am also considering motorcycle engines, though I dont know how I
would marry one to a transmission. But a V twin, a BMW boxer twin, and
a 4 cylinder boxer engine have all crossed my mind. There are some
older foreign engines I really like but then that may make parts hard
to get and expensive.
Eric

*Have you considered a Volkswagen motor ? Some years the ring gear can
be flipped and the unit mounted as a mid-engine .
Yeah, I thought about a Bug engine. And I know all about those ring
gear swaps. The transaxle from a bus had the ring gear swapped to the
other side because the buses had a gear reduction on each wheel. So to
put a bus transaxle in a Bug the gear needed swapping.
Back to bug engines. I drove bugs for years and really know them
inside out. But I also trashed a few engines being plain too hard on
them. And they're air cooled. I want heat in the winter.
Eric

On Thu, 17 Oct 2019 13:41:42 -0500, Jon Elson
wrote:

On Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:55:09 -0700, etpm wrote:


Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.
Drive train out of an MR-2?

Try to find one cheap. There's a guy down the road into town who
rebuilds rice burners and an entire, multicolored, multiyeared MR-2
car lot sits out front of it in various states of dismantle. He
probably has the grabs on everything MR-2 in this half of the state.

--
There is s no such thing as a hyphenated American who is
a good American.* The only man who is a good American is
the man who is an American and nothing else.* We are a
nation, not a hodge-podge of foreign nationalities.* We
are a people, and not a polyglot boarding house.
--Theodore Roosevelt

On Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:55:09 -0700, wrote:

So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English wheel.

Sounds like fun, Eric. Suggestion: Make friends with a local bodyman
and offer to help him out a few hours/day, a day or 2 a week, in
return for him teaching you how to wheel. They're likely to know
where to find flat sheet for bodywork, too.


I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.

Your best bet is to find a blingable drive train you like and then
build what you want around it. Have you read all the sheet metal and
fab books yet? A few:

Paint & Body Handbook by Don Taylor and Larry Hofer

Ultimate Sheet Metal Fabrication: Build from scratch with aluminum and
steel. by Timothy Remus (English wheel info)

Sheet Metal Handbook: How to form and shape sheet metal for
competition, custom, and restoration use. by Ron & Sue Fournier

Let us know what you settle on. I'd love to follow your build, having
had the same hankering long ago.

--
There is s no such thing as a hyphenated American who is
a good American.* The only man who is a good American is
the man who is an American and nothing else.* We are a
nation, not a hodge-podge of foreign nationalities.* We
are a people, and not a polyglot boarding house.
--Theodore Roosevelt

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Oct 2019 13:55:09 -0700, wrote:

So when I retire in a few years I want to build a sports car from
scratch. I have the equipment and knowhow except for the bodywork.
Which means I would get to butyand learn how to use an English
wheel.

Sounds like fun, Eric. Suggestion: Make friends with a local
bodyman
and offer to help him out a few hours/day, a day or 2 a week, in
return for him teaching you how to wheel. They're likely to know
where to find flat sheet for bodywork, too.


I don't know which engine to use though. So I'm looking for
opinions. I want to use a 4 cylinder engine. The engine needs to be
fairly common and parts must be available for hopping it up a bit
and
for general rebuilding.
Very important the engine needs to look great. So I'm looking for
opinions here. A great looking engine that's fairly common, can be
hopped up some, and won't break the bank to work on.

Your best bet is to find a blingable drive train you like and then
build what you want around it. Have you read all the sheet metal
and
fab books yet? A few:

Paint & Body Handbook by Don Taylor and Larry Hofer

Ultimate Sheet Metal Fabrication: Build from scratch with aluminum
and
steel. by Timothy Remus (English wheel info)

Sheet Metal Handbook: How to form and shape sheet metal for
competition, custom, and restoration use. by Ron & Sue Fournier

Let us know what you settle on. I'd love to follow your build,
having
had the same hankering long ago.


I did too, until I helped build a batch of prototype electric cars and
saw how many little things had to be just right. I still don't
understand the subtleties of caster and camber and kingpin
inclination. Fortunately [a racing chassis expert] was on the team.